Getting Well

Jean Trounstine From: Almost Home Free. Pecan Grove Press, 2003

There is no way back from knowing.
You're touched
once you see its face,
mouth stretched into an awful nasal a,can, as if the word was extended
wide as eyes,
the cer seeping out last,
air from a tire,
an angry s.
Even in the healing
it sweeps through us,
palpable cold
permeating fingers, toes.

We curl up together in the night,
trying to find sanctuary
in the other's arms.
Love is not an antidote,
no talk-show cure,
and yet, it keeps us aloft,
two boats on a sea
of our tears,
a kind of holy water
on each other's skin.